this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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Television
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Currently on Season 4 of Star Trek: The Next Generation with my daughter. It has aged shockingly well for something that aired nearly 40 years ago. Granted, Season 1 was a bit rough and some of the filler episodes were.....dodgy at best (the alcoholic bringloidi ("dreamers" in Irish) for example with the fuckin' straw on the floor, leprechaun accents and pigs in the cargo bay was rude AF tbh).
Two series that I tried to watch but couldn't because I felt they were long past their sell by date:
Babylon 5 is a show that's good if you watch a curated list of episodes, not every single one (at last for seasons 1 & 2).
Once it gets out of the episodic stuff and into a more serialized format it holds up shockingly well, and feels painfully relevant today. Honestly, a lot of people owe Straczynski apologies after they accused him of being too heavy handed with his politics. If anything, the dude was being too subtle as it turns out.
Babylon 5 had big multi-season story arcs in the era of self-contained monster of the week episodes meant for syndication and watching in random order.
It also has some very good character development. The Londo/G’Kar dynamic is pretty epic.
But it does have the random weak early episodes others mentioned, and of course it is a product of its time. It has a high episode count and 90s SD vfx.
It’s still one of my favorite shows and I will do a watch through every several years, but it would have SO much potential as a modern remake with 6-10 episodes per season. Kind of like the expanse but with more fantasy and imaginary physics. The space physics were very good though, especially for the time.
It's been a few years since I ran through B5 but I hold it in the same class as TNG. It's got a questionable 1st season and some weird episodes throughout but overall it's good television that, for better or worse, still relates to the world we live in.
Fair enough. Maybe I should stick with it then. Thanks for the alternate viewpoint.